


Off-Script

by enflashings



Category: No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 17:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enflashings/pseuds/enflashings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where they inadvertently meet in another city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off-Script

At the end of the second year, Nezumi’s walking the streets of No.2, looking for bookshops and cheap flats for rent and convincing himself that what he’s really been looking for, all along, is a place he might be able to call home. He only wishes they’d given these city-states better names, like Arcadia or Eden or hell, even Denmark would do.

The streets are made of stone, slick in the rain and rounded by footfalls. His studio apartment comes with two windows, more space than he needs or knows how to fill, and a landlord that accepts Nezumi's late payments with more patience than business acumen.

He starts working part-time as a prompt in a theatre with air conditioning, lighted walkways and sold-out seats. Next year's production is Romeo and Juliet, and Nezumi spends the days following his audition filled with dread that the director will cast him as Romeo. It turns out to be Tybalt. Rehearsals start, and his biweekly paycheque goes a long way in placating his landlord.

And one afternoon on the cusp of spring, while he’s standing at a stall in the open-air weekend market, debating whether he wants a loaf of sourdough or just a baguette, he looks to his right and there’s Shion.

And curtains, Nezumi thinks inanely, end scene. Exeunt omnes.

Nezumi can count on one hand the number of times he’s had stage fright, real, debilitating, get-me-out-of-here-right-now-before-I-throw-up, stage fright. Most of those times were when he was much younger (too young for the parts he played, in all honesty), or when he wore women’s clothing for the first time, or when he’d been a last-minute replacement for a cast member whose loan shark had finally caught up to him.

Mostly he’d bullshitted his way through it with the same bravado with which he bullshitted his way through everything he found terrifying. Life skills.

“It doesn’t count if you kidnap me,” he tells Shion coolly, shoving his hands inside his jacket pockets. “Pretty sure when I promised to come back, the subtext was I’d do it of my own volition.”

Shion laughs like Nezumi is the best and brightest thing in his world and the sound of it grounds him to a halt, stalls his lines inside his mouth, and leaves him there in the middle of the stage in a theatre at the end of the world, audience: one.

“I’m not here to kidnap you! I didn’t even know you were here,” Shion marvels, reaching for Nezumi’s elbow and steering him away from the stall and its safe sourdough and baguettes, like Nezumi is a toy on a string. He doesn’t even seem that surprised or caught off-guard. “I mean, are you here? Or passing through?”

Nezumi is pretty sure he’s managing to uphold his end of the conversation, but he can’t be certain because his head is filled with the low static hum of panic, and it's drowning out everything rational. Shion’s grown a few unintimidating centimeters taller. He looks like he got a short, respectable haircut once, but that was months ago and now he can’t be bothered. He’s got a shoulderbag that’s overflowing with books and binders and the edge of a laptop, and he’s leading Nezumi through the sidestreets like he knows the way.

His cardigan is grey.

“What – Shion,” Nezumi finally interrupts, with the intention of saying something incredibly meaningful and profound. Shion stares up at him, expression open and expectant and it’s like Nezumi’s three years of whatever-the-hell have just dried up like water in the desert.

He’s got nothing.

“Oh, right, sorry! They gave me a place to stay while I was here, I have tea and – well, I didn’t buy the pastries I was going to but I think there’re crackers? If that’s okay,” Shion adds, like it’s relevant. “We’re almost there.”

“Sure,” says Nezumi. He follows Shion into a four-storey building, up two flights of stairs and into suite 304.

Whoever ‘they’ were, they’d made sure Shion had only effusive things to say about their hospitality. The third-floor apartment is small, but obviously very new and very state-of-the-art. There's some stupid abstract painting on the wall in the living room, and Nezumi focuses on its hideousness while he takes off his shoes, jacket and rucksack, making vague 'I'm a guest in your home' noises at Shion.

"It's ugly, right?" Shion grins. Nezumi can only look at him. "The painting. Can't make fun of me for it, though; it came with the place."

The only person Nezumi is thinking of mocking at this point in time is himself. Being away from Shion has done nothing but make him even more bewildered and confused and altogether _derailed_ than he's ever been.

The worst part, though, is how Shion is picking up his slack.

It makes the years between them feel like a mistake, one that Nezumi will never be able to rectify or atone for. A mistake that hasn't even taught him anything.

"Come into the kitchen, I'll make you – well, whatever I find in the kitchen, honestly."

"I guess I interrupted your grocery shop," Nezumi realizes, and he's pleased to hear that it comes out sounding a bit like himself. Method acting. Shion just smiles and starts putzing around the small kitchen. The appliances and counter are so clean Nezumi imagines himself going blind from the glare. There's a breakfast nook with a small window. Nezumi sits there and tries to come up with something for his hands to do that isn't flail wildly in panic. The morning's paper is folded neatly on the table, but when he reaches for it, he realizes his fingers are trembling.

This leaves him to look at Shion, who is opening cupboards and squinting at their contents, occasionally offering the air between them a good-natured comment about making do. He'd done the same back in the West Block, Nezumi realizes, even when there certainly hadn't been cupboards or appliances or even a kitchen, only a burner and a banged-up pot and whatever they could cobble together in that small space underground. Nezumi hasn't made Macbeth soup in years.

His right elbow makes a dull thud when he lands it on the table. He poses his head in his upraised hand, tilts his chin up, and stretches his legs out in a slow, apathetic movement.

"Hey Shion," Nezumi calls to him, suddenly overwhelmed by irritation and anger, all of it at himself. "Missed me?"

Shion's back is to Nezumi, but Nezumi knows, even before his shoulders start shaking like leaves in a hurricane, that he's started to cry.

"Oh fuck, Shion—"

Shion just holds up a hand, no. He doesn't turn around. Somehow not seeing Shion's crying face makes it all the worse. Nezumi feels, more keenly than he has in months and months, that he is exceptionally talented at making Shion unhappy.

"Listen," Shion says. His voice is breaking but he's taking in deep, deliberate breaths. "I'm going to stop crying. We'll talk and have a hot drink. And then we can take it from there."

There's a voice in Nezumi's head that's saying this could work. A quick afternoon social, and then he's out the door like it never happened. Pause and resume. Shion will understand; Shion will agree that this doesn't count.

Shion, who is snuffling into the sleeve of his cardigan.

It is the same voice that refused to let Nezumi look back, the last time Shion cried and the last time Nezumi saw him.

Nezumi is on his feet before his brain strictly registers the movement, and his still-shaking hand is landing on Shion's shoulder, turning him around, before his heart can abort the mission.

Shion scrubs at his eyes uselessly. "I'm sorry, I'm trying so hard—" and Nezumi knows he's not just talking about his current crying jag.

"You remember what happened the last time you started crying on me, right," Nezumi says. It's half tease, half warning. He thinks he'll do something unforgivable if he stalls for even a moment. Shion's face reddens, only partially in preparation for a fresh onslaught of tears.

"I'd only cry harder," Shion replies, giving a wet laugh. "So don't do that."

"Nope, my interest is piqued," Nezumi tells him, affecting a lilting tone to hide the more frantic nuances of his voice. "Gotta see how you'll find a way to cry harder."

Shion moves first, and the staccato that simple fact sets off in Nezumi's heart has nothing to do with panic or uncertainty or fear. It's the quick rhythm of moving back into time, catching up to lost heartbeats.

Kissing Shion is like nothing else in the world. Nezumi feels this with certainty, now, since he's seen a whole lot of the world. It's not because Shion is particularly skilled – he's still new to kissing, though Nezumi couldn't care less about that because Shion is the quickest learner he's ever met. It's not because Nezumi's gone a long while without kissing anyone, or because this is only the third kiss in his entire life that he's genuinely wanted to give or receive.

He pulls away, reflexively. Shion's fingers stay clutched in the fabric of his shirt. Nezumi wants to shove him aside, say something cutting and cruel, storm off into the streets, but those are old, worn-out impulses.

"Nezumi, I can't wait again," Shion gasps. He's giving little hiccupy sobs now, although he's not actually crying harder as threatened. "I swear I won't, I'll tie you up if I have to, just don't leave."

I didn't know you were the kinky sort, Nezumi thinks of saying.

I still have every intention of keeping my promise and coming back; not now but soon, he thinks.

Please don't say you can't wait.

The feeling of stagefright is back again.

"I'm still—" he says, and it's an effort.

"Scared? Of me?" Shion asks, as he wipes away the last of his tears. Nezumi bets that neither of them will ever forget that conversation they'd had, on the edge of No.6 on that bright spring day, no matter how long they live. He doesn't know if he regrets that or not.

Shion's gaze is searching when he doesn't answer. Nezumi wishes him luck: he hasn't found a damn thing in nearly three years.

"You told me once," says Shion, "that even without knowing what direction to go, I had no excuse for not moving."

"I told you a lot of things," Nezumi sighs. He doesn't resist when Shion takes both of his hands into his own. Shion's grip is steady and sure and gentle, hardly a grip at all. "Doesn't mean you listened."

"Same goes for you," Shion replies. He looks down at their joined hands, and Nezumi finds himself unconsciously mirroring his gaze. "I was telling the truth about wanting to be with you, you know."

"I listened," Nezumi defends. He's watching the way Shion's thumbs are swiping over his own knuckles, back and forth. "You wouldn't shut up so I kind of had to."

"You didn't." Shion's expression holds no blame or resentment. "You heard what I said but you didn't _listen_."

"Are you really the person to be lecturing me on semantics? Your vocabulary—"

"Is horrendous, I know," Shion finishes, smiling. The movements of his thumbs haven't broken rhythm once. "So let me try again.

"What I was trying to say, and I guess I'm still trying to say it, is that I want to be with you, more than I want to be with anybody else. It's not that I can't live without you, but that I'd really rather not, because I'm so much happier when I'm with you, Nezumi. Even when we're living off moldy bread or you're angry and yelling, I'm still happier with you.

"Because I love who I am around you, and I love who you are, too. I love _you_ , and maybe it's selfish of me, but I want, more than anything, for you to love me in return. I always—" Shion pauses for the first time, and Nezumi doesn't dare to look up to see if he's biting his lip like Nezumi suspects he is. "I always felt like if I'd been able to say that then, you wouldn't have left."

"I still would have," says Nezumi. He knows that's true because every part of him wants to bolt, even now. Shion smiles a crooked smile.

"I know. But I'd have liked you to have heard it, first." He releases Nezumi's hands. He's not crying at all, now. "I'm starving, let me see if I can make us some lunch."

"Okay," Nezumi says, and stands there dumbly watching for a few seconds before retreating back to the breakfast nook.

Shion makes cucumber sandwiches, and they talk about Shion's work in the reconstruction committee and their mutual acquaintances in No.6 and where the best cafes are. The conversation makes elegant detours to avoid touching on anything important, and Nezumi can almost allow himself to buy into the fantasy that they're just friends who happened to run into each other, catching up on their life events before leaving to go back to their separate lives.

Nezumi tries to think of a time when that was true, when they legitimately were living as strangers, wholly disconnected from each other but for a few shared circumstances. All he can think of, though, is a stormy night and an old stitched-up wound, that faint but irrevocable presence on his left arm. The memory is a touchstone to a structure Nezumi can't understand at all.

"Stay for dinner and a movie?" Shion suggests, when they reach a lull in conversation and the early evening has become apparent in the way shadows slink into the kitchen. He raises one eyebrow so Nezumi can't mistake it for anything other than a joke.

Nezumi agrees because he has no idea how to say goodbye this time, and he might as well be a coward in every single way possible. It's easy enough, once he gets started.

Dinner turns out to be takeaway from an eight-table Italian restaurant down the street, and a movie becomes the same circling, wary conversation as before. They're good at that, Nezumi realizes, or at least he's good at it and Shion is too kind to not play along.

"Anyways, I couldn't keep saying no," Shion is saying. He'd come here for two months, Nezumi learns, about two weeks of which remain. "It would've been bad for international relations."

"Didn't know No.6 even had those."

"Sort of?" Shion frowns in thought, leaning into Nezumi's space to steal some of his pasta. They're sitting on the living room floor, takeout containers spread out haphazardly on the coffee table and surrounding floor space. "But No.2 and No.5 have been really interested in what we're doing, and really helpful, so we definitely have them now."

"And you're playing ambassador," Nezumi can't help but grin. Shion shoots him a look. "What? Politics isn't really your style."

"No, but I'm doing what I can," says Shion. "Also it's really amazing what people will tell you when they think you're completely clueless."

Nezumi laughs out loud at that. "Did they think you were stupid?"

"They don't have special courses or anything like streamlining here," Shion informs him. "So on paper, I think I probably do look kind of stupid, getting kicked out of school as a preteen."

"Especially in combination with your very authoritative presence and irreproachable command of the English language," supplies Nezumi. Shion just smiles guilelessly, as though to demonstrate his point. "What a rude shock that must've been."

"It's too bad, though. Originally I think they were going to take me on sight-seeing tours and have me sit in on some low-level government meetings, you know? But now I barely have any time to see anything that isn't at a university or government office." Shion picks at a lone bit of zucchini on his plate. "I worry that I'm going to lose sight of what's real and what's just armchair theorizing."

Nezumi groans. "Well, I'm not giving you another remedial course in reality, that's for fucking sure. A three year sabbatical is about a century too little to recover from your brand of airheadedness."

It's a misstep and they both know it.

What Nezumi expects Shion to do is turn his face away and struggle to get his expression under control. He expects him to make some sort of excuse, like cleaning up the dishes, to get some small distance between them. Then, encouraged, Nezumi will say something irreverent, and Shion will laugh even though it's not all that funny, and they'll go back to being something Nezumi can deal with.

"Nezumi," Shion begins, and Nezumi instantly knows where that's going. He stands in a rush.

He can't bring himself to take his jacket and bag, and doesn't wait to hear the tell-tale sounds of Shion's following footfalls. The stairs are a blur, and the evening air is cold.

Nezumi doesn't know if walking will fend off that chill, but it's worth a shot. Shion's block is all too short, and Shion himself is waiting underneath the streetlight nearest to his building's door when Nezumi rounds on lap three. The artificial white light makes his hair look like something unreal.

"Don't fucking follow me," Nezumi snarls, refusing to deviate from his path and passing Shion closely enough to shove his shoulder. Shion moves with it, unperturbed, and falls into step with Nezumi. "Shion!"

"No," says Shion, in the firm tone that always made Nezumi stand at wary attention. "I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't let you leave again, and I don't intend to break it."

"I'm not—" leaving, Nezumi finishes silently, but he's not sure whether that's a truth or a lie.

"I don't care what you're doing right now," Shion replies. "But we're going to do it together, all right?"

No, not all right, Nezumi thinks. Not all right at all.

The thought gives him a burst of furious energy, and he rounds on Shion at once. Shion startles at the sudden movement, which should be satisfying but isn't in the slightest.

" _No, we're not_ ," he growls. The resolve on Shion's face only intensifies as they stare each other down. He doesn't say a word in reply, but the way he matches Nezumi's pace the second Nezumi goes into motion again is reply enough.

Anger gets him through another lap without comment, and then boils over when Shion has the fucking nerve to reach for his hand.

" _Don't,_ " Nezumi yells, violently pulling his arm out of reach as fast as he can. A light turns on in one of the buildings on the other side of the street. Shion doesn't spare it a single glance. "You can't just—"

Be here, telling me you love me, Nezumi thinks. In this city where I thought you were still far away.

"Touch someone like that," he says aloud.

"You went for my throat the first time we met," notes Shion, as calm as Nezumi isn't. "We've kissed and danced and shared a bed together. So I'd say the rules don't apply when it's us, do they?"

"They _should_ ," Nezumi snaps back. "That's the problem."

"Nezumi," Shion says, quietly. "You left your bag and jacket inside. Come with me and get them, at least?"

It's not a concession or a request.

"Don't fucking tell me—"

"I'm not asking you to marry me, Nezumi," Shion interrupts, exasperated. "Just come inside before one of my neighbours thinks we're having a domestic dispute, will you?"

He noticed the light going on after all. A part of Nezumi is bizarrely gratified that Shion's situational awareness seems to have improved.

"As Your Highness wishes."

They head back up the short flight of stairs to Shion's flat. There's a mirror in the landing that Nezumi didn't notice the first time up. His own expression is like nothing he wants to show anyone, least of all Shion, and it makes his stomach turn to see it. He feels about a thousand years away from being stage-ready.

His jacket hangs on the coatrack next to the door, and his rucksack slouches at the foot of it. Shion's quiet, but that could mean anything.

"I thought you were going to tie me up," Nezumi comments. He crosses his arms. "I'll probably resist, just so you know."

"I know."

"And unless you've been training under some kung fu master, that's gonna wind up in my favour."

"Probably, yes."

"So I guess," Nezumi casts about, "say hi to your mama for me. And I'll see you when I see you."

Curtains, Nezumi orders. Get off the fucking stage, you useless rat.

"Do I get a kiss this time, too," Shion asks, since he's clearly not read the script. Nezumi forces out a laugh, shaking his head, no. "Nezumi."

"Don't give me that; if you found a girlfriend you'd have all the kisses you wanted. Work on that, yeah? Consider it an extracurricular."

"Nezumi," Shion repeats. The tone is familiar in a way Nezumi can't quite place, though he feels like he should and it hurts a little that he doesn't. "All I want is you."

"All sold out of that," chirps Nezumi. He slides his hands into the pockets of his jacket, gives an insouciant shrug. He's remembering his character business. This is good. "Try the store on the other side of town."

Shion just looks at him. There's nothing desperate or panicked or upset in his eyes at all, and it's a stark contrast to the sixteen-year-old Nezumi last left. Hell, to the Shion who'd cried until he ran out of tears in his own kitchen, not hours before.

"Why," Shion begins, slowly and without holding Nezumi's gaze, though it seems like he's forcing himself to look away, "is it not okay for me to want you?"

"Because you don't even know what you're saying," Nezumi launches back. The words are practically muscle memory, ready before he even has to think. "Because you and I would never work out. Because I'm the sort of person mothers warn their children about, for fuck's sake."

"I know what I'm saying," says Shion. "I can't predict the future and neither can you, so don't make that a reason. And—"

"If I'd wanted a deconstruction," Nezumi half-laughs, "I'd have fucking flipped through some Derrida, now can you—"

Shion has two fistfuls of Nezumi's shirt before Nezumi remembers that oh yeah, Shion had been good at this. Nezumi forgets himself and clumsily backs up into the front door, hitting it with a dull thud that shakes his entire spine.

Shion's face has bloomed red with emotion, and his stance is too tense to be solid. It wouldn't be hard to do some damage here.

"Let go of me."

"I can't," Shion replies. "Not even three years ago, I still—"

"Please," says Nezumi. He doesn't bother trying to stop his arms from dangling uselessly at his sides, letting the door take weight off his uncertain knees. If Shion will just let him go, if he finds somewhere warm and quiet and alone, this will all collapse back into a known substance, like dust settles into visibility on bookstacks and shelves.

Shion makes a shushing sound, and his hands release Nezumi's shirt only to slide up over his shoulders, bringing his arms around in an embrace.

It's all he can do after that to drop his face into the crook of Shion's neck and let it happen, whatever it is. Shion's skin is still overwarm from their spin about the block, but his pulse is as steady as Nezumi remembers it. His own is a thing hammering to be let out, fast and desperate.

He squeezes his eyes against it.

"It's so late," Shion says, into the quiet of their breathing. "Leave in the morning; I'll give you the bed."

"Where will you sleep," asks Nezumi, mindlessly. As he speaks his lips brush Shion's neck. Anyone else would take it as suggestion.

Shion takes the couch in the living room and a blanket pulled from a shelf in the bedroom closet. He says good night to Nezumi from the doorway, and shuts the door to the bedroom without having to be asked.

Nezumi lies in the dark, fully-clothed and on his back at first, and then curled into a tight ball on his side, like the dumb animal he is. He thinks of all the ways in which Shion has been brave and kind and everything Nezumi has always known he is, but could never quite allow.

It could be the same script as three years ago, Nezumi thinks, starring the same poor player, still strutting and fretting like it's the same hour. Only now Nezumi can't muster any fury, here in a fearful huddle in Shion's bed.

He thinks, if I leave tomorrow, will I be able to know that Shion is waiting, and that waiting is like this.

There isn't a sound from the living room, where Shion is ostensibly sleeping. Nezumi opens the door as quietly as he can all the same, padding to the couch with its patchwork blanket and shock of white hair and pale hand, loose against a scarred cheek. He sits on the coffee table, arms crossed over his knees, and leans forward.

"Shion," Nezumi says. His voice is entirely normal in volume and tone. Shion wakes to it at once, looking at Nezumi in sleepy askance. "Listen.

"I was going to come back on a stormy day. I was going to say, 'You better be grateful, someone like me doesn't condescend to clichés all that often,' and you were going to cry. I was planning on kissing you."

Shion's eyes are wide. He's sat up in a slow movement that he would probably be startled to hear described as graceful, adult.

"By then I would have all the answers, of course. I'd tell you where I'd been and put up with all your damn incessant questions. You wouldn't want to talk about what you'd been doing, but I'd tease you until you did. Even the stupid stories about Tsukiyo and Inukashi and whatever. I'd listen. I'd want to hear all of it."

Shion has his knees pulled up to his chin now, the blanket scrunched into his lap.

"I'd ask if you'd kept up your reading after I'd left. If you'd changed. That would have been a rhetorical question. Then, probably, we wouldn't have known what to do next. All the same, you'd have given me a warm meal and a place to sleep and we would've sorted it out, eventually."

Nezumi exhales. He looks down at his hands.

"But now that can't happen."

"Not some of it, no," Shion murmurs. They watch each other, in trepidation and calm. Shion's lips quirk, and the smile that follows it is more surprising to Nezumi than tears would have been. "For such a good actor, Nezumi, you're kind of bad at improvisation."

"That's low," Nezumi frowns. Meeting Shion's eyes now isn't anywhere near as difficult as he thought it would be. "You just fuck me up, that's all."

"I fuck you up?" parrots Shion, incredulously. "Nezumi, I love you, but I don't think you need help with that." Nezumi stares. Shion laughs, and smoothes the back of his hair down self-consciously. "What?"

"You called me fucked up."

"I didn't," Shion defends. "I implied it. Anyways, I've been reading up on psychology and it's nothing unique for a person to have—"

"And now you're calling me boring and derivative."

"I am not," cries Shion, reaching out and whapping Nezumi on his upper arm. He crosses his legs and sets the blanket aside. "I'm saying I'm not a negative influence in your life."

"Interesting hypothesis," says Nezumi. He has no idea what he's saying anymore, but it's easy enough to say, so he tries not to think about it. "Got categorical data to back it up?"

"Don't need it," Shion counters. "This isn't science."

"What is it, then," Nezumi asks. His heart picks up speed, inanely.

"It's two people who've been apart coming back together," answers Shion. He extends his right hand, twines it in Nezumi's own. "I think they make each other happy. I think they should stay together."

"Simplistic reading."

"Occam's razor."

They sit in silence, in the patient dark.

"Nezumi."

"Yeah?"

"I really can't let you go, you know," Shion admits. He's not apologetic at all. "But I'm wondering if you can finish up all your business here in two weeks."

"Why would I—" Nezumi cuts himself off with a firm closing of his jaw. Shion's going back to No.6. "I'm in the middle of a lot of shit, you know."

He is, it's true, but Nezumi can't elaborate further than that because absolutely nothing springs to mind: not his theatre commitments, not the interlibrary loans he has on order and his overdue fines, not the fact that he's paid for rent for the next two months after his landlord's patience had run out.

"I'll help you," Shion exclaims, like that isn't the most obvious, constant thing in the universe. "I'll help you pay for any debts or—"

"D'you think I have gambling arrears or something?"

"Your plane ticket," says Shion. "Shipping fees for your things. I – I can talk to your theatre manager or whomever—"

"This is starting to sound like kidnapping again."

"You're not listening," sighs Shion. He stands, tugging on Nezumi's hand until Nezumi joins him. "Nezumi, please."

"I'll listen," Nezumi tells him. It's impossible not to. Everything in the world that isn't Shion seems faraway and vague, soft-edged and harmless, and right now, Nezumi can believe that's true.

"I love you so much," Shion says. The rhythm of his words is off-balance with emotion and genuine with the same. "And – for the record – we can still do some of the things in your original script."

Shion's hand is warm around Nezumi's. Nezumi waits. It's the least he can do.

"I mean," continues Shion, "you're still coming back, right?"

"I am."

"Then -- do you think you could? Now?"

"Are you crying again, Shion."

"It's your stupid script," Shion bursts out, laughing wetly. "I can't help it!"

"Fuck the script," Nezumi decides. He lets his hands drift where they want, upwards, thumbs settling in the creases of Shion's elbows. Shion frowns, inexplicably.

"Parts of the script were good," he ventures, a little shyly. He curls his hands around Nezumi's lower ribs, where they rise and fall with every deep breath. "We should keep parts of it."

"Which would those be, Your Highness." Nezumi knows already, from the way Shion's head has tilted, the subtle forward shifting of his entire body.

They don't say anything more for a while.

The couch is small, and no matter how Shion arranges it, the blanket isn't large enough to cover both Nezumi's feet and shoulders. The added warmth is altogether unnecessary, but Nezumi can't find the energy to say so. He wants to complain that he'll probably end up on the floor by morning, too, even with Shion's limbs all braced snugly around his own. Maybe grin and lie and say that he liked the original sleeping arrangements better. There are, in the end, a thousand things Nezumi should tell Shion, both right then and in the near and far future, both important and inconsequential.

"Good night," Shion says, kissing Nezumi's temple. "Sleep well."

And he does.


End file.
